The RACOM Newsletter July 2005

In a town like Marshalltown where 58% of the school children are on the free lunch program, MEDIC (Marshalltown Economic Development Initiative Committee) Chairman Mike Miller thinks the cost of broadband services creates social classes of the have’s and the have not’s.

"For our community to thrive, we need to invest in all our citizens. That means access to information and education for everyone" says Miller. "Businesses want to be located in communities that offer a strong workforce and a high quality of life. They go hand-in-hand, and this is about our future."

The result? Marshalltown is the first in the state to create a wireless hot zone covering 20 blocks of the town square with free internet service. It’s the first step toward their goal of providing free or reduced rate internet to all citizens by the end of 2006.

Affordable broadband internet access is considered critical to economic growth in communities all across the country. Congratulations to Marshalltown for taking action!

The system is installed and maintained by RACOM. For more information or to investigate adding this service to your community, please contact RACOM and Mike Miller @ (888) 752-1067 or mike.miller@racom.net.

Senator McCain Introduces Legislation To Support Muni-Networks

Senators Lautenberg and McCain introduced the "Community Broadband Act of 2005" to support communities all over the country in their pursuit to provide advanced communications systems. The legislation is designed to put a check on state laws that may prohibit publicly owned networks.

Large telcos have been fighting against publicly-owned telecommunications networks while the United States continues to slip in high speed internet access penetration. Since 2004 we have slipped from 10th to 14th. We lag behind Canada, Japan and South Korea which all have successfully combined municipally owned and privately held networks.

Iowa's population has remained flat, yet large urban areas are growing, often at a rapid pace. Their growth is at the expense of small towns across the state.

Let's continue our growth, but also protect our rural communities and find ways to bring these services (public or private) to all our towns.

In another Marshalltown initiative, the Police are arming their field officers with information. They'll have access to their information systems which contain all their local data about people, locations, crimes, vehicles, alerts, etc. They'll also be able to run queries on state and federal databases for driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations. Mug shots, fingerprints, license signatures and other images are coming later this year as part of NCIC 2000. Virtually any information they can get in the office is now available anywhere around town. It's a giant leap in productivity and safety.

The police department is also working with local business owners and schools to make live and recorded security videos available to officers in their patrol vehicles. This gives officers much better descriptions of suspects and saves valuable time. In fact, a recent security video of a parking lot caught a car theft on tape, and this video was being live recorded by RACOM and it was immediately available to officers via their internet access on their mobile data computers. (See Video)

Marshalltown's actions reflect the growing need for law enforcement agencies everywhere to address resource challenges. Many departments have endured budget tightening and loss of manpower while the numbers of incidents and reports continue. Improving efficiency is the only way to meet the demands, and agencies expect broadband mobile data systems to eliminate office time by 1-2 hours per officer. How? By enabling them to do everything from their mobile office.

Keeping officers and the public safer is another objective. There's information that every agency keeps back in the office that can help notify officers of imminent dangers. That information is now available at precisely the time they'll need it.

More information on broadband mobile data systems is <available here>. Or, simply contact us if you'd like to investigate it for your agency.

An outcome of Iowa’s Interoperability Task Force (2004) is a command-level communications project that enables radio communications between agencies despite their use of different radio systems, bands and manufacturers.

Consider weather-related disasters, public health outbreaks, chemical spills and other disasters. These incidents result in large response efforts that require communication and coordination among local, regional, state, federal and volunteer organizations. Even utility companies may be among those descending upon your local towns. This interoperability project provides tools to facilitate communication.

The initial project enables agencies throughout the entire Polk County/Des Moines area, Sioux City and the Tri-state area and Cedar Rapids to have radio communications with the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC), all Hospitals across Iowa, the Iowa National Guard and Iowa State Patrol.

Most folks recognize the need to occasionally talk to other agencies, but needing to "know" what other responding agencies are doing is much more frequent. This means agencies often need to be able to "listen" to radio traffic from other agencies without patching the users together. This is often overlooked by many interconnect devices, but made easy with this solution.

Other agencies and Regional EMA leaders are encouraged to investigate the use of this as a regional solution to improve communications and responding capabilities. <More Information>

Why is this important? Information sharing (voice, data, pictures, video, plans, etc) between emergency service responders are essential elements of good preparation and response. Yet, traditional phone, cellular and internet services are basic services that are degraded or even rendered useless in crisis situations.

The ICN is a private network that is not subject to the same loading conditions that cause other networks to fail. Unlike your internet service, your bandwidth is yours and yours only. It's not "shared" with other users in your neighborhood. This "sharing" is what causes slow periods when kids come home from school, other local businesses are active on the internet, or your neighbor is downloading a movie. It's also a reason why services crash.

The ICN can provide an "INTRAnet" between EOCs that isn't affected by the public. It's the most stable, secure and affordable means of collecting and sharing information for homeland security and emergency management communications.

The ICN also offers the most affordable rates while accommodating virtually any bandwidth requirement. Using a wireless connection to the ICN (in lieu of a leased telco circuit) will further reduce your costs.

All in all, this is a fantastic development toward our homeland security/public safety efforts.

For information about connecting your emergency management operations, contact Randy Goddard.

LEIN Region 3 (Northeast) has invested in radio communications to improve crime solving and prevention across their 15 county region. The new mobile and portable radios enable network members from different agencies, towns and counties to securely communicate with each other no matter where they travel across the state. This level of communication hasn't previously been possible.

Phil Fordyce of the Oelwein Police Department has led the initiative for the Region and is actively pursuing agreements with local and state agencies to establish interoperability protocols. There are times when LEIN officers will need to communicate directly with the local law enforcement agencies, dispatch, hospitals, state patrol, etc.

Seamless regional coverage is being accomplished by installing a single 800 MHz site that will be owned by the city of Oelwein, then connecting it to the RACOM statewide network.

The Governor's Homeland Security Conference is being held July 26-28th at the new HyVee Hall at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines.

Iowa's ECIN, or Emergency Communication Interoperability Network will be introduced during a breakout session on Day 2 of the conference. The technology used will be on display in the RACOM booth or at Catalyst Communications.

RACOM will also be demonstrating mobile data and video applications across high speed/broadband networks. Please stop by.

We've recently upgraded our website in an effort to better answer your questions and provide information about all the latest advancements in critical communication technologies. You'll find information about: